TBEX ’10 and New York: The First Day

New York! What can I say, it stole our hearts and most of our cash.

Two weeks ago John and I traveled across the country to attend TBEX ’10 (Travel Blogger Exchange’s conference). I’ve seen online that some 800+ posts have been written about all aspects of this conference. But for those who weren’t there or who have no idea what a TBEX is, or just wants to re-hash the good ol’ time had there, let me go over the fun filled weekend highlights!

To get to New York John and I drove 3 hrs north to Birmingham, Alabama. Sure there are smaller regional airlines nearer but we had a plan. We were determined to take the train back! More on that on the following posts. As we stayed at a friend’s house we naturally stayed up too late chatting and catching up over a bottle of wine. Waking up at 4am is never fun, but with only a handful of hours of sleep it gets darn right tough. Little did we know that we were just getting started on this late-night early morning cycle…

Sleeping at the airport

We flew to Chicago and then to Newark Airport. All the while I was trying every position possible to curl up and sleep, but the airline seat engineer seemed to have done everything possible to dissuade such activities. Finally we arrived in Newark, and flying in we were treated to a spectacular vista of the cityscape. From Newark we hopped on the train to Penn Station ( I was a little disappointed as I had confused Penn Station to images from Grand Central Station). From Penn Station we took several wrong metro lines before getting acquainted with the subway system and finally found our selves safely checked into the hostel with a few hours to spare before the pre-party was to start!

Newark Train Station

After a short neighborhood exploration we took a quick nap in our hostel bunk beds. While asleep I sadly managed to kick a hole into my favorite white Panamanian made in Ecuador but bought in Colombia hat while sleeping….the first causality from NY. This was actually our first time sharing a room with strangers in a hostel as well. The hostels we stayed in Colombia offered private rooms. We thought it would not only help shave a few bucks off the trip but thought it would be fun to try it out. Turns out we didn’t have any time to socialize with those in the hostel as TBEX kept us out and about all day and night except for when we crawled straight into bed.

Overall the Jazz Hostel was a friendly, clean, and situated very conveniently to everything. They had a roof top (though only one chair now) and a common room with wi-fi. I would recommend it to any budget oriented traveler, or those who would rather spend their money other than on a bed. That being said I wasn’t a huge fan of the beds…reminded me of a half-deflated air mattress filled with potato/rice sacks. But John didn’t notice this so could just be me.

It’s such a small world, our room-mates were two English guys who had a passion for all types of American sports. When we told them we had just arrived from Alabama they responded by saying “oh yeah? Last time we were here we were at an Auburn game down there!” It’s amazing how small the world can get!

Our Jazz Hostel Room

The TBEX pre-party was to be held in the Omni-Berkshire Hotel. A swanky place a little ways uptown from where we were staying. Luckily I googled the place before getting dressed and opted out of the shorts and t-shirt idea I originally was toying with. In my defense, it was amazingly hot up there!

Who says you need a five star room to look five star!?

The Omni Berkshire Hotel

We got to the hotel and was impressed to see that what we had originally thought would be a rag-tag group of scruffy travelers were in fact, a very clean and swanky looking crowd. There were booths set up with different cocktails from the different resorts a PR firm was handling, an open bar with beer and wine, and most importantly all of our favorite writers, bloggers, and tweeters where milling about! The only awkward thing was that no one knew each others real face, just the little avatar from the blog or twitter. So most of us spent the entire evening trying to casually look at people’s name-tag first, the only problem was that the name-tags were normally on people’s chest!

Cailin O’Neil from TravelYourSelf.com and the Crew!

The Omni Hotel even gave out free hotel stays for those that reviewed their rooms. By the time the last group of us went upstairs, and promptly lounged about their comfy looking bed and couches, I’m supposed to receive an email with the free-room coupon but so far no luck… Oh what a tease, after just a little nap on the beds at the hostel I was ready to upgrade to the deluxe five star suite!

The pre-party was starting to empty out, the next day was the start of the all-day seminars and panels. While most of the mature, responsible people were heading back to their rooms the rest of us headed over to an Irish pub for the pre-party after party. You will begin to see a pattern here…

Finally we were all seated in one place, thought the crowd and music was rather loud we were finally able to sustain a conversation with people. We were able to chat with Cailin, Candice, Abby, Pam, Spencer, Natalie, Eric, Steph, Craig and Linda, Matt, Dave among many others we had met at the Pre-Party. It was buckets of fun, finally getting a chance to talk in depth with people that we had known online for months and years. I think the universal comment that came out of this meeting was that “everyone is pretty much the same personality online as off.”

On the way home we swung by Times Square. It was still packed. Kids, families, youths, adults, in every state of mind where milling around, having dinner, partying, walking…at 2 a.m. We even saw parents taking their kids for a walk in their strollers. Though I’ve heard this area is a nightmare in the daytime so we were glad we stopped by and got it off our list. The sights were amazing and just like in every other film made in N.Y

Times Square

Caitlin, Aly, and Candice Does Times Square

Southern Boys: Spencer and John Representing the South

Fin. Day One